Professional Research and College-level Teaching
For professional research jobs and college teaching in astrophysics, astronomy, or planetary sciences, a PhD is almost certainly required. Some junior college teachers only have Masters’ degrees but in our field, even this is rare. To pursue this career track, the preparation you will need here at CU is:
- Astrophysics track or
- Physics Plan 1 or
- Double major in Physics and Astrophysics
If the former, we recommend you take a couple extra upper division Physics courses to enhance your general physics understanding and prepare you for the Physics Graduate Record Exams (GREs). Additional recommended courses are:
- PHYS 4230 Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics (3) and/or
- PHYS 4410 Quantum Mechanics & Atomic Physics 2 (3)
We strongly recommend you obtain some research experience while still an undergraduate. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, including laboratory assistant jobs with CASA, JILA, LASP, or NSO, research with individual APS faculty or researchers, and doing an undergraduate Honors Thesis. You should also consider competing for and attending a summer UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program) between your junior and senior years (watch for announcements on the bulletin board outside the APS Department office).
A successful research or institute job opportunity will require some computer programming skills. If you do not already have programming skills, we recommend you take ASTR 2600 Computational Techniques (Python) (3) and ASTR 3800 Data Analysis & Computing (3) [requires ASTR 2600 & Calculus III].
Writing an Honors thesis requires a minimum GPA of 3.3 and declaring your intention to conduct Honors thesis research by the Spring semester of your junior year. You then have the summer between your junior and senior years, the Fall term of your senior year, and the first two months of your last semester here to complete your Honors thesis. Graduating with Honors in the Fall requires a modification of the above schedule. Those students doing an honors thesis should contact the APS Department Honors representative, Erica Ellingson, for full details at Erica.Ellingson@colorado.edu.
We recommend you plan on taking the Physics GREs twice to help you obtain a decent score. To ensure entry into a quality graduate program (top 15) requires a minimum score of ~50% on the advanced Physics exam and >90% on the three GRE general exams.
Out of the ~10 Astrophysics track students that graduate each year from this program, 2-3 go on to graduate school. This means that to obtain entry to a good graduate program requires more As than Bs in your Physics, APS, and Math courses. Graduate school is typically 4-6 years in length and that is where the real competition for research and teaching jobs begins. Recent graduates of our program obtained admission to graduate programs at UC Berkeley, U of Maryland, U of Washington, Washington U. in St. Louis, U of New Mexico, UC Santa Cruz, U of Wyoming, and Caltech, to name a few.
Students of Planetary Sciences can pursue an alternative academic track by majoring or minoring in Geology. For students of planetary surfaces, further advanced coursework in Geology could be substituted for the further advanced coursework in Physics recommended above. Planetary science students may instead choose to major in Geology with a Space minor, or perhaps double major in Geology and General Astronomy.